Deeper interaction through reading books

Sunday

Apr 7, 2013 at 7:00 AM

By John HallwasMcDonough County Voice

As any local folks know, Garnette and I are south-going, winter-escaping “snowbirds” — and this year the term (very common in Florida) took on vivid meaning as countless refugees from northern cold shared reports from family and friends about the weather back in the places they came from. But we are always excited to return home, as spring arrives, to be among an array of old friends and sorely missed, familiar places.

And, for me, there’s another community that I always miss---my personal library of a few thousand books, accumulated over more than fifty years. As that suggests, I still have some titles that I acquired while at Antioch High School — Dickens’ “Great Expectations” and Hawthorne’s “Twice-Told Tales” among them— before coming to Macomb exactly half a century ago.

By then, I knew that reading and writing were what I wanted to do, and I couldn’t envision a future without books. They were already beginning to impact the framework of my world — an inner world, to be sure, but one that continually shapes my response to family, friends, community, human history, and the ever-mysterious cosmos.

Except for family life, no experiences of mine — working with people, teaching classes, traveling in other countries, speaking in many towns — have had a greater impact on me than encountering a myriad of intensely realized cultures and people in books. I ended up acquiring the best-loved and most influential titles that I read, and the very sight of them on the shelves in my office prompts a feeling of intense belonging, like many people experience in a long-occupied home. Those volumes are not for decoration: I’m a frequent re-reader, too.

I am reminded of an 1869 article that I ran across in the “Macomb Journal,” and copied, called “Bookless Houses.” It was written by a very famous preacher and intellectual, Henry Ward Beecher, who was also a noted book lover, and it’s a great commentary on the relationship between books and selfhood in American culture:

“Give us a house furnished with books rather than furniture. Or both, if you can, but books at any rate! . . . Books are the windows through which the soul looks out. A house without them is like a room without windows. . . .

Let us pity the poor rich men who live barrenly in great bookless houses. And let us congratulate the poor, for in our day, books are so cheap that a man may every year add many volumes to his library for what his tobacco and beer would cost him. Among the earliest ambitions to be [fostered] in clerks, workmen, journeymen — and indeed, all that are struggling in the race of life — is that of owning, and constantly adding to, a library of good books. . . .

It is a man’s duty to have books. A [personal] library is not a luxury, but one of the necessities of life.”

Several generations later, in our time, many people are also going “bookless” for other reasons, which have nothing to do with their income level or lack of aspirations. As newspaper and TV journalist Ron Sachs recently said in a commentary on the deepening social disconnection caused by computers, iPads, and other technology,

“The death of the real written and spoken word has not yet occurred, but we are close to laying them both to rest. Ironically, we believe that we are communicating at the highest level in history when we have reduced the art (of communication) to a cold, technical exercise, devoid of deeper thought, feeling, and warmth.”

Of course, he is joining many others who have written in recent decades about the decline of book reading and its apparent negative impact on concentration, empathy, thoughtfulness, and cultural awareness.

The Macomb Area LIFE Adult-Education program will be responding to the various issues suggested here, and much more, in a two-hour program titled “Books and Reading: An Historical Overview,” coming up on Thursday, April 18, from 2:00 to 4:00 at the Spoon River College Community Center on East Jackson Street. I’ll be doing an illustrated presentation on manuscripts, printing, book clubs, the impact of reading, and related matters for that program, and the event will feature a browsing display of over 100 books, about books and reading---available from 1:00 on---compiled by Judy Kerr and Kathy Nichols.

Everyone is welcome, and registration for the $5 program is easy (call 298-1911). There will be a folder of helpful materials and light refreshments for those who attend, too, and it’s a fine opportunity to interact with others who have appreciated books.

The program is a great brief way to sharpen your realization about the development and cultural impact of books and reading over the centuries — and about the momentous changes that we are now living through, in what some commentators have called “the close of the book era.” I am not so pessimistic about the future of books and serious reading, but there is much to ponder related to reading in this remarkable era of technological, social, and mental change — which goes deeper into our inner lives than most people imagine.

Author and local historian John Hallwas is a columnist for the McDonough County Voice.

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